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Intellectual dishonesty

A couple of months ago I noted that “‘Teach the controversy’ ... makes about as much sense as teaching that tuberculosis can be cured by eating wolf livers.” Creationists – whether old-fashioned young-earthers or modern proponents of intelligent design – try to create a controversy where none exists. One of their current strategies (they'reevolving) is to promote “critical analysis” of evolutionary theory.

The Discovery Institute has released a new textbook, Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism to be used in course that teach the (non-existent) controversy. Nick Matzke sums up the intellectual dishonesty of “teach the controversy” proponents quite well:

So, here’s the score: Rather than doing something respectable, like deciding to knuckle down and convince the scientific community, like all real scientists have had to do before their views were taught in introductory science classes, the Discovery Institute, led by young-earth creationist Paul Nelson (who is the major author of Explore Evolution), has decided to sell its scientific soul (again) and launch the scientific revolution with the 14-year olds in the ninth-grade biology classroom (again).